Plastic bags have found wide use in grocery markets and retail applications for transporting produce groceries and various other items. To be most useful for consumers plastic bags should incorporate a number of features. These features relate to the ease of use of the bags with respect to tearing them from a bag roll, opening them, placing goods inside, carrying them and dispensing them.
A variety of designs have been developed to meet these needs. U.S. Pat. No. 5,215,275, issued to Gold, is directed to a process for making a roll of plastic bags such as those used in the produce section of a supermarket. The plastic bag roll is made from a film extruded in the form of a tube and slit into two parallel faces. The two-ply web of material is then sub-divided into a series of interconnected plastic bags. The bottom of each bag is formed by a transverse seal extending from one side of the web to the other. Below seal, each ply of the web is perforated separately to prevent sticking. The perforation lines of the two plies coincide at the nips that facilitate tearing a bag from the roll. After perforation, the sides of the web are heat sealed to form the bag. The finished roll of bags is wound about a dowel or cardboard tube.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,652,253, issued to Benoit, is directed to a method for forming a roll of gusseted flat bottom thermoplastic bags. A tube of typically polyethylene film is collapsed and simultaneously gusseted yielding gussets that do not fully extend to the vertical center of the tube. A seal line and perforation line are then simultaneously formed. Triangular regions bounded by the sealed and severed line, the cut line and the edge of the gusset are then removed from the tube. The formed bags are wound into a roll interconnected at the perforation lines.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,971,138, issued to Soughan, is directed to a toiletry-dispensing package. A roll of envelopes formed of flexible polymeric moisture-resistant film material is shown. These envelopes are separated by perforation lines extending across the width of the roll. The end points of perforation line coincide with nips or cuts.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,802,582, issued to Johnson, is directed to a roll of continuous draw tape plastic bags. The bags are interconnected laterally by perforation lines bounded by side seals. The side welds of adjacent bag tape hems form a notch at the end point of the perforation line.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,747,815, issued to Benoit et al., is directed to a collection of thin thermoplastic bags meant for grocery produce. Lines of weakness are formed transversely across each film face for bag tear-off. Both faces of the bag have a series of similar perforations beneath the seal. In an alternate embodiment the front face of the bag has a series of perforations interrupted in the center by a slit approximately one-third the width of the bag. In another embodiment the perforations on the front bag face are interrupted by a cutout. Both the slit and the cutout accommodate opening of the bag mouth and removing the bag.
It is an objective of the present invention to provide plastic bags that can be easily stored on and dispensed from various roll dispensers. It is a further objective to provide bags that can be easily torn from a dispensing roll. It is a still further objective of the invention to provide bags that can be easily manufactured in gusseted or ungusseted form. Finally, it is an objective to provide roll mounted bags that are easily opened after dispensing and that are easily removed from the roll.
While some of the objectives of the present invention are disclosed in the prior art, none of the inventions found include all of the requirements identified.